Finishing up the Spring 2018 Anime Season

Here are some closing thoughts on shows I didn’t blog, but still watched this season.

Comic Girls— I lost interest in blogging this episodically about halfway through the season, but still kept up with it. It was a perfectly nice slice-of-life show about girls who draw manga, except I wanted something a little more serious– like Bakuman, only with girls– and that was not this show. I think it’s okay to acknowledge that a show turned out to be different from what you wanted, as long as you realize that the creative team had no responsibility to deliver specifically what you wanted. There was never any indication that the show was going to be anything other than what it was, so really, the fault is with me for looking for something that was never meant to be there.

Still, even if the show wasn’t quite what I was looking for, it did have its moments. Kaos’ struggle with finding her voice through manga was a very relatable depiction of artistic insecurity, and as a result, her eventual success feels more hard-won than it usually does in these learning-your-craft tales. Her self-deprecation and frequent crises of confidence may have seemed over-the-top, but that’s what made it work; she basically acted out every insecure thought that many artists have, but usually force themselves to hide. People who say “I suck” over and over again in real life tend to be annoying, but it works when you’re an adorable anime character with pink braids running down your back, I guess.

This is another one of those shows with yuri moments all over the place, but nobody ever actually uses the word “lesbian,” or any other terminology that would make it explicit. I wonder; do people not count shows like this as increasing LGBT representation because they don’t label it that way? Are they right to feel that way? Nevertheless, I can’t imagine anyone even trying to deny that Kaos is a lesbian; the evidence is overwhelming. Maybe there’s one person out there somewhere who thinks that Kaos isn’t gay, but that person probably also thinks that Attack on Titan is really about bowling.

Uma Musume— This show is unusual in that it ended up being good in a completely different way than I anticipated. At the beginning of the season, I thought that if Uma Musume was going to be watchable to anyone but people with a highly specific horsie-girl fetish, it would need to embrace it’s own audacity: Go big or go home, make it as nuts as possible. Like Keijo!!!!!!!!, I guess.

Instead, they went the other route and made a show that was entirely about female athletes, with the gimmicky elements substantially toned down. Not only was the idol singer aspect minimized after the first episode or two, even the “girls based on famous horses” shtick wasn’t that important; you could take the racehorse connections out of this show, make it entirely about female track runners, and it would remain pretty similar. The horse aesthetics add charm and flair and whatnot, but end up being pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Above all, they managed to make the race sequences exciting, which I wasn’t expecting. Main girl Special Week lost often enough that victory never felt pre-ordained, and the show managed to drag out the races a little bit for drama without slowing them down too much, not an easy balance to achieve.

All in all, a really pleasant surprise this season. I seem to be in good company with this opinion, because despite the jeers before it started airing, I don’t think I’ve heard a bad word about it since it started.

Kakuriyo, Bed and Breakfast for Spirits— This is continuing for another cour, but I wanted to mention it here since I don’t think I’ve talked about it since the Spring Season Preview. Anime seems to have a monopoly on this kind of show: a story that focuses on sometimes-creepy occult creatures, yet with tons of class, warmth and playfulness. If any non-Japanese creators have ever done a show with the feel of this (or Kamisama Kiss, or The Morose Monokenean), I’ve never come across it.

Ai is a great heroine, because she’s a strong character who displays that strength in ways other than kicking ass. I hate this idea that for a character to be “strong,” they have to be a badass ninja who can beat up all of their enemies or something. Ai mainly influences her world through cooking, but she does it in a very assertive, decisive way.

She also doesn’t fall into the typical anime trap of compromising her own safety just to make a stupid point. She refuses to marry the Ogre Inn Master, instead opting to work off her family’s unpaid debt as a cook. However, characters frequently call her “the Ogre Bride” or “The Ogre Master’s Intended,” and she never corrects them, because for a fragile human in the spirit world, having that perceived status is helpful. Either that, or she doesn’t bother correcting them because she really doesn’t give a toss what anyone else thinks.

I don’t know if this really needed to be two cours; my gut feeling is that I’m going to find it dragged out by the time it stops airing in the fall. But maybe the second cour will introduce some twists that keep things lively.

Isekai Izakaya— When it started, I thought this show was just an inferior version of Restaurant to Another World, and it never did anything to disabuse me of that notion. It’s a serviceable food anime, if you like watching anime characters cook and eat things that look delicious, but that’s really all it has going for it. While Restaurant had this delightful air of magic and mystery, we never get to learn much about the world of Isekai Isekaya; it seems to be a vaguely medieval setting with little character.

That said, this show is pretty much critic-proof. If you like food anime, like I do, then you tend to watch everything, because there isn’t all that much of it; if you don’t like food anime, this would never be on your radar in the first place. The live action bits at the end were intriguing, but sometimes it felt like I was sitting through a boring episode to get to the interesting 3 minutes at the end, which is a shame.

Yotsuiro Biyori— This show gave me exactly what I asked for, nothing more and nothing less: a relaxing, slice-of-life show taking place in a cafe, focusing on four handsome dudes, with a healthy side of food porn. There is a larger plot involving main guy Sui and his cold-as-ice, businessman brother, but honestly, very little happens with that and it doesn’t even matter. This show isn’t quite Yuru Camp levels of comforting, but it’s kind of along that same continuum. As the season progressed, I found myself looking forward to this one more and more every week.

I’m afraid this show will likely be forgotten in the future, but I think it should be added to the list of shows that are great to watch when you really need to chill out: Yuru Camp, Non Non Biyori, Three Leaves, Three Colors, etc. I don’t feel like there’s any real need for a second season, but if they make one, I will watch it.